


Shut my ears to the song that plays

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Angst, Christine Daae-centric, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 00:44:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18906031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: After Erik, Christine doesn't like music anymore. (Except she does, she loves it and she can't stand it.)





	Shut my ears to the song that plays

Raoul was never a good singer. Not that he was bad either; he simply lacked the training. He liked singing, though, would often sing without really thinking about it, one reason he and Christine had gotten along as children.

It broke Christine’s heart to tell him to be quiet.

The first couple times she simply asked him, and he obeyed with an embarrassed if slightly confused smile. The cabin they were sharing on the ship was small. He must have thought it was just her nerves acting up. Well it was, just not the way he probably assumed. She didn’t hate the sound of his voice, but he’d picked up scattered tunes from the opera house after hanging around there with her too often. And she’d just run away from the Opera Populaire; why would she want to think of it?

When she finally snapped at him, it was because the exercise he was absently humming wasn’t just one that all the singers used but one that Erik had taught her personally. “Will you be quiet for once, Raoul? Dear God!”

Raoul was taken aback. And as was typical of him, rather than submitting to the appearance of anger, he instantly became defensive. “I don’t see that there’s any harm in my humming once in a while, Christine. I’m not that loud.”

“You’re not that melodious either,” Christine said. “You’re not a trained singer, so why play with scales? Don’t put on airs like you’re Ubaldo Piangi.”

“There’s no harm in it,” Raoul repeated, crossing his arms. “For that matter, why haven’t you been singing scales? Shouldn’t you keep up with your practice?”

“I’m not going to be an opera singer anymore,” Christine said, “I’m going to live in Sweden and be your wife, so what does any of that matter?” When she saw he was taken aback, she said, “Fine! Keep on singing. I’m going to get some air.” And she went out onto the deck.

They’d talked many times before about how she was leaving Paris and her life as an opera singer behind. She’d always focused on the life she would live instead: A peaceful life, in the land of her birth—certainly a more respectable one, having a husband instead of singing on stage for her bread, and the fact that the husband would be Raoul was something straight out of a fairy tale. And even more than that, she’d thought about the fact that she wouldn’t be afraid anymore.

But even out at sea, having left Erik far behind (even had he wanted to, he couldn’t swim the ocean and climb onto the boat, could he?), the fear had not left her. She found herself watching dark corners carefully, and starting at sudden noises. Other times in broad daylight her heart would race endlessly for no reason at all.

She didn’t mind talking about Erik, or the events of the past few months, with Raoul. They had talked about it often. It felt safe, somehow, to talk about Paris and Erik as if they were far past, now only distant memories to pick apart into little innocuous bits. But then he’d do something like a hum a line from one of the operas and she’d feel as if she were still in her room at Mamma Valerius’s house, and Erik was somewhere just out of sight, listening to her recite and watching, always watching…

She shuddered.

Later she’d apologize to Raoul. And she’d explain, maybe. If she could. He always tried to adjust for her needs, so he’d adjust for this odd one too. If only it didn’t make her seem so weak! That was the worst of it. Raoul could sing as cheerfully as he wished—she’d seen him singing along with the sailors’ chanties, some of which he already knew—and yet she, a prima donna of the best opera house in France, could barely stand to sing a note without cringeing.

* * *

 

In Sweden, Erik should have seemed distant. Instead, he seemed closer than before. In Paris, she had known when to expect him—at home and at the opera house mostly—and had had some sort of idea how to avoid his sight as well, even though it hadn’t always worked. On the ship, with land nowhere in sight, she’d felt somewhat separate from any mortal world. But on land and in a strange place, everything seemed dangerous. Erik might well be anywhere. Of course she knew he wasn’t. He’d said he was letting her go, and she believed him. Her dear teacher.

Only, she could know he was nowhere near and still believe he might appear at any moment at the same time.

Raoul had stopped singing when she was around to hear, which was most of the time. They currently were living in a house of the Daaes, small but decent, in separate rooms since they still weren’t married. Causing a bit of gossip in town, but gossip hardly bothered Christine. She liked to think people might talk about her being involved in a scandal that had nothing to do with murder or ghosts.

At home there was no music. When she went out, though, there was no way to always avoid it. Beggars singing in the marketplace, or sounds emanating out of bars and public houses. And then in her head, she’d hear Erik’s critique.

“That man! Frogs sing better—no, that is almost a compliment—howling cats sing better. Can you believe he has the audacity to ask for money for that? He’d do better to stand with his hat in his hand and his mouth firmly shut. Now, dear, this is why I always tell you not to mistake volume for quality—aren’t you glad for the tip? You’ll never sound like that rogue, but only ever have a voice of the sweetest honey, singing the loveliest notes. My voice from your lips.”

That’s why I don’t sing anymore, she thought to herself once, because he’s not here and he’s taken his voice back with him…

This frightened her in a whole new way. She went home and tried singing scales, testing if her voice still worked. She found that it trembled, but it grew stronger little by little. No, she still had her voice. But she could feel him, Erik, standing behind her, listening carefully.

Clapping broke out behind her when she finished her scales and she jumped, turning around quickly. It was Raoul, standing in the doorway of her room with a smile on his face.

“I haven’t heard you sing in a long time,” he said.

She smiled nervously. “Well… I just thought I’d see if I still had the knack.”

“Still have the knack! Darling, as if you could ever lose it. You’re the best singer in the world. I love hearing you sing.”

Impulsively he hugged her. She hugged him back. Raoul… He’d been out in the garden, and smelled of dirt and labor, which was a little funny for a vicomte. His enthusiasm for her voice was reassuring in a way, old and familiar. He’d always liked her music, after all, even before Erik.

Then he said, “You can’t imagine how happy I was when I saw you singing at the Opera Populaire. I recognized you immediately with the ballerinas, but when you sang I knew I had to get up the courage to go see you—you had the voice of an angel.”

She stiffened.

He realized his mistake immediately. “Christine, I’m sorry, I know—I didn’t mean it like that, Christine, I’m sorry…”

She pushed him away and smiled off his apologies. “Don’t. It’s me, I’m being ridiculous.”

The voice of an angel. Raoul had always loved her singing, but now, she thought, it was ruined. Refined, of course, as Erik saw it, and as she couldn’t help but see it too. Everyone in Paris wanted to know who her tutor was. Everyone in Paris thought she was brilliant. But it was a voice somehow dirtied, too, perverted, no longer the voice Raoul loved, no longer her voice at all, even if she could still sing with it. It was not hers.

She didn’t sing again for days. Yet, having sung once, she couldn’t quite stop herself again as thoroughly as she had on fleeing Paris. She sang quietly when no one was around, scales and opera pieces sotto voce. Dirty music with which she perverted her home, yet she loved it. She loved singing.

She’d loved Erik, for a while. But loving him had hurt. She liked to think she didn’t love him anymore, and he had no hold on her. Yet there he was, in her beautiful, ugly voice. There he would be until the day that she died.

* * *

 

The one thing Christine regretted about leaving France was that she had left behind her father’s burial ground.

(There might have been other things she regretted about leaving France, but this was the only one she would admit to herself.)

She couldn’t head down to Perros-Guirec to visit his grave, so when the mood took her to pay her respects, she instead went down to the seashore and sat on one of the rocks. Perros-Guirec, with its cold waters and pink granite, was not so different from here. It was a good place to mourn and pray and feel her father’s presence.

“I will sing to you,” she said, when she had run out of prayers. She took a deep breath. “Gentle flowers in the dew, be a message from me, and to flow’r that is rarer, and more precious than you… though fair you be.”

Lines from Gounod’s Faust, from Siebel’s song. How often had she practiced this song, guided by one she thought was the angel of music. And she had kept faithfully to her practice out of filial piety; her father had sent him. Or so she had thought.

“How my life I surrender, with your beauty so tender…” She paused for breath. How out of practice she was, to need breath! And her voice was hitching. “How my life I sur...”

How she had surrendered her own life! And not to her father’s wishes, nor how her father would have chosen.

She curled into a ball on top of the rock, knees pressed against her chest, and broke into sobs. Even here, trying to speak to her father, she was faced with her own foolishness, with the tarnishing of her life. Yet she would have liked to sing to him. He had taught her music first, had been her first teacher.

“I will do it!” she said suddenly. She got to her feet. “He cannot stop me. I will sing for you, papa, like you taught me to do.”

The song that she sang then was nothing so refined as Gounod. It was a folk song she had learned long ago, a song of a sailor lost to the sea and his mourning wife who would miss him forever. She hadn’t learned it from her father, but somewhere else—in town maybe—but they had sung it together before. She sang it as well as she could, though the waves drowned out her voice to some extent.

When she was done she stared out over the waters. A chill took her. It was bad luck to sing about drowned sailors when her own Raoul was a sailor of sorts. Not that he was off at sea. He was safe at home. Suddenly she had the urge to go make sure, to be with him…

She blew a hurried kiss to the ocean and raced off down the road back to her cottage.

* * *

 

Sometimes when Raoul started humming, she would stop and listen. He was not always humming songs from Paris. Some of the songs he hummed she didn’t even know, and she would ask him about them. He would apologize, and she would tell him not to.

Sometimes she practiced her scales and sometimes she didn’t. Erik never showed up to scold her or praise her either way.

Sometimes she sang.

And one day in town she saw a violin in a store, selling for less than she would have expected. Though she and Raoul did not have all that much money saved up, she asked if the store owner would take her money and give her a little credit. The Daae name was good in town.

She brought it home and presented it to Raoul with much ceremony.

“But Christine, I’m not in practice. I’m not really a violinist anymore.”

“There are plenty of fiddlers around. I expect we can get someone to help you. Besides, you’re probably not as bad as you think.”

He placed the violin in the crook of his neck and raised the bow. Carefully he scraped it against the strings. She winced at the sound. “…I think it needs rosin.”

“I think I need rosin.”

“No, you need practice. But soon you’ll be playing as well as ever. It will be nice to have music in the house again.”

He smiled a little sheepishly. “Well, maybe. We’ll see.”

Someday she would be ready to sing around him, too, maybe even around other people. It would come in time.

**Author's Note:**

> Me trying to come up with a title: Oh yeah "shut my ears to the song that plays" is a line from a Lorde song right?  
> Google: Actually it's eyes not ears. Which massively changes the meaning of the line.  
> Me: Oh well I'm still going with it.
> 
> Anyways this was written for the following prompt on tumblr: "A prompt for POTO: something about Christine learning to love music again after the main events (let's assume it's hard for her to love it now because she basically associates it and her own musical talent with Erik). Can be gen, R/C or C/C."  
> I thought this was a good prompt! So here I am at 2 AM writing and posting postcanon Christine angst bc yes.


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